I don't want to reopen my old wounds
But it’s just the only thing I have left to do
There's nothing more to be said about me
Except for a condolence or a passing apology

Picking at the ***** scars, hoping for an infection
Hoping the festering bacteria would spread through
Hoping for sensation, or something maybe close
Hoping that these old wounds would feel brand new

I’m already too numb to ask for more medication
Already too debilitated to beg for a final miracle cure
I’m already too sick, far too late to try on and on
Already at the brink of extinction to still feel unsure

I’m opening old wounds, bleeding them out to dry
Doing everything they all told me not to do, only left out to die
There’s nothing more to be done, no band-aid left to rip
These old wounds seem useless when there’s nothing left in me to fix.

Winter spills over Kentucky
like a splash of liquid nitrogen

what eats is scarce because what's eaten is scarce
scavengers search trash cans—enjoying the warmth inside

ice scabs over fluvial lakes
once their revenue streams have been frozen

a faint, far away generator screams away the cold
like smokestacks on the horizon

(all that smoke must mean something
I figure something must be burning)

a fire burns somewhere—I'm not there
I'm here, and here, there's a fire over there

crimson cardinals appear through neutral trees
like I was struck in the head with a blunt object

darkness drifts overhead where geese drift away
as Kentucky loses consciousness

gauzy snow is wrapped around the state
—a cold compress for the fall's wounds

time heals all wounds
but is a wound itself.

Her beat had been so bastardized that a tree had grown to protect it;
To harbor silence in pandemonium.
Isolation was the only remedy to a disease persistent to turn past into present,
So she grew on her own terms, and her heart beat for no one but herself,
Because to let someone in, meant to risk axing away at the barricade she had worked so arduously to withstand.
When she fell into him the first time, the wounds were preemptive.
Her brittle bones cast away at the hopes that he would see her heart before her mind;
From which idiosyncratic branches wrapped around her fingertips,
And the oak shards springing from within, just barely inching away from his own heart.
Strangely enough, he didn’t seem to mind.
When he stripped to bare back the scars were evident,
They cascaded from collarbone to the dip of his hip.
That’s when he brought her closer and whispered marvelously:
“I would bleed again for you.”
At the beginning, the boy hurt,
Yet he still saw the heart it held between the prongs of wooden cage.
So he continued to hurt, for her.
His mission rooted in the purpose of painting her the canvas of what life ought to be.
Penciling in the possibility of a reality where her aching shoulders could be lifted,
And a new smile plastered onto her lifeless frame.
He painted her in the image of who she used to be-
As if he knew her before she grew weary at life’s expense.
In the canvas, the wooden cage had disappeared, and a luminosity introduced itself.
He had uncovered her heart, and no longer was it encompassed by a shell, but freely beating;
Beating for him.
Every morning, day in and day out, meters of her branches gradually retracted,
And the boy’s scars gradually sealed over.
Oddly enough, it seemed as if they had healed each other.
That the quiet embraces they held each night didn’t pierce him,
but rather comforted his mind that this time, it would be different.
Somehow, she would come to love him, and him, her.
She saw in him a soldier; whose battle wounds were ghastly.
He had lived through hell and came back to dispel the stories,
But instead of stories of agony and woe, and anger and spite,
He spoke of the morning dew on dandelions reflecting the sun’s rays and how they most beautifully sprung from nothing.
He spoke of the quiet whispers of the wind bringing music to deaf ears.
He spoke of how if you listen closely, you can almost hear each cricket sing its song
in a field of thousands.  
Each time he kissed her,
he did as if it were the last.
Each time he held her,
he did as if she were asleep.
Each time he healed her wounds,
he did as if they were preemptive.

why do you get to charge straight ahead
and still i linger,
locked behind a fence.
still i watch my tears fall onto the sheets.
i don't think this festering wound will ever fully heal.
think there will always be this little broken part of me.
i thought i was strong and cunning.
instead, i find myself a push over,
a doormat,
a fool.
second chances, third chances, fourth chances.
in the day i write love poems
but by night i stitch my bleeding heart.
why is it that this pain is a hollow chest, numb lips, and shaking fingers?
a feeling you can't quite explain,
until your sisters tell the same tale.
and then the wound is back.
worms and knives and caves.
you cried and confessed
yet i still dream about the times i acquiesced.
you lived in the guilt for a week,
i live in it permanently.
so let's bleed together
with our permanent wounds.
watch me bleed out...

I used to think about you
almost every day,
there wasn't one thing that
didn't remind me of you,
but now there's nothing that
longs to the though of us,
of your name.

It's not that I've forgotten you, but I no longer
hang by you, or your memories with me;
maybe because I've found someone
to replace you;
to forget there
was ever a thought
of you.

In wakefulness,
Your heartbeat stutters in its attempts to make peace with the impulsive evening rain.
But when you soak in the fog and embrace the coolness of winter's breath,
you will find that it will quietly sew itself into the scars that line your heart, and illuminate through your wounds in the shape of a dying ember, radiating warmth.